So presumably you read about yesterday's bowling trip. Much fun was had by all. While the trip itself was planned several weeks ago, I couldn't help but think that it has a bit of a "St. Crispens' Day Speech" feel to it, you know, 'tonight we party for tomorrow night we may all be dead"?

You see, today was Analyst Day, which is basically the corporate equivalent of parent-teacher conference day, where the executives are the teachers, industry analysts are the parents, and Yahoo! is the student.

During the quarterly report last month, Yahoo! announced that there would be layoffs, and a one-by-one analysis of each of Yahoo!'s 44 properties (mail, messenger, classifieds, geocities, etc.) to determine its future in Yahoo!'s new direction. The details of these assessments and determinations would be announced on Analyst Day, November 15th.

I shouldn't be so melodramatic. The Gooey group (Gooey = GUI = ... Oh yeah, I did that already) is centralized, so even if properties were shut down or folded into other properties, we would (hopefully) remain relatively untouched. Still, any time the family is trimmed, it's hardly a time for mirth.

Thinking about it today, I realized that I've worked for seven computer-related companies, four of which have dot-bombed (BMUG, MacWEEK, Dantz, Casady & Greene, Ikonic, CKS (aka USWeb/CKS, reinvent, marchFIRST), and Eleven), all with massive layoffs before the end, and yet I've never worked anyplace at the time they were laying off people, so this is all new to me. Also interesting is that every public company I've worked for (with the exception of the University of California) has gone under, and every privately-owned company is still around. Interesting.

Anyhow, the stock price has been going up steadily all week, apparently because strategic layoffs of between 5 and 15% of a company's workforce is seen as a healthy thing. I feel bad for feeling good about the stock. So the news was official today: 400 people (13%) will be laid off in the next few weeks, with 75% of the cuts coming from Yahoo! Broadcast, based in Dallas, and International divisions. Also, Yahoo! will be hiring another 100 people in their core growth areas. Presumably these new 100 will have specific skills or geographic locations or flexibility that the departing 400 don't.

So it looks like Gooey is pretty safe, though I can't sat the same for fellow weblogger Jason Silverstein, whose office (the aforementioned Yahoo! Broadcast) is facing workforce cuts of 45%. The worst part is that Broadcast was bought by Yahoo! less than a year ago, and now they're letting half the people go. Ai-yai-yai.

So tomorrow is the all-hands meeting, where senior management talks to all the employees, but I won't be there, as I'm going to Tahoe for a family reunion. I'll be sure to watch the archived webcast when I get back though.

The good news is that it looks like analysts viewed the all-day presentations well, and that Yahoo! does have a good plan for growth over the next four years. If Yahoo were to bomb, I'd lose faith in the net, because we do things right, have good karma (x-10 notwithstanding), and provide core, established services people need and use every day, and we don't charge for all the basic stuff. Call me tunnel-visioned or biased, but I don't think there's anyplace else out there that you can go to for 90% of the things you use the web for, at least I can't think of one.

So that's pretty much it for today. Just a from-the-trenches look at what's going on. The ship sails on, cool things are always on the way, and maybe most of them will still get to see the light of day.